Summer Miracles

After some hot days the rain came and then cooler dryer air arrived. I bask in the perfect temperatures and open-window weather. Delightful flowers bloom in early summer gardens. Berries form on blueberry bushes. Strawberries begin to ripen. A doe wanders through the backyard. Swallows swoop and soar. Everywhere I look I see

Miracles

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

— Walt Whitman

Using a neutral density filter to create a long (10 sec) high-key exposure of Lake Minnetonka at Noerenberg Gardens – trying to capture the wind moving the bushes on the side of the lake